New York World’s Fair Comics #1: Superman at the World's Fair

 This is part of an ongoing series where I review Golden Age Superman, weekly, issue by issue, starting from the very beginning. 

New York World’s Fair Comics was a two-issue series, published yearly during the World’s Fair. The first issue starred Superman, Zatara, the first appearance of the golden age Sandman, along with a few other comedic characters, while the second added Batman to the mix (the first was published before Detective Comics #27 unleashed the Caped Crusader on the world). It brought DC’s biggest stars together for a 96-page blow-out issue (Detective and Action were 60-70 pages), though without any direct crossover, so the stories could all be produced separately by their original creators. The format proved successful, eventually leading to World’s Finest Comics, a quarterly book that would run separate Superman and Batman stories in the same issue for over a decade until it finally teamed them up in the 1950s.

I'm sure Shuster took some inspiration from Flash Gordon, but this is ridiculous...

Both issues feature the Trylon and the Perisphere on the cover, two modernist structures that were the centerpiece of the fair, which boldly proclaimed to show “the world of tomorrow”. A fitting destination for the Man of Tomorrow, then. In the story, Clark is sent to cover the World’s Fair for the Daily Star. As Superman, he halts a train crash, helps an exhibit get built, and saves Lois from a criminal on the run. There’s not really an overarching plot or theme to it, it’s just a bunch of standard Superman beats vaguely linked together by the Fair itself. Although it’s an architectural exhibition and not an out-and-out commercial, it still feels pretty tacky. Clark really wants to go, basically looking directly at the viewer at the end and telling you to go, and Superman even stands atop the Perisphere (incorrectly captioned as “the Trylon”) to locate Lois at one point, in a very oddly drawn panel. On the cover, Superman has blonde hair and a red shirt. The interior colours are overly high contrast and garish. It’s functional, but it all feels rather slapdash and strung together, second rate compared to the main book.

seriously, what the hell is this silhouette?